The Peak District

Lying at the heart of industrial England, the Peak District is an area of intimate wooded dales, steep-sided gorges and windswept boggy moorland. Perhaps the most welcome of all Britain's National Parks, it is certainly the most accessible—within 75 miles of its border lives nearly half the population of England, and the rich variety of its scenery attracts tens of thousands of visitors yearly.

This book is the general introduction to the region for naturalists, presenting a concise account of the Peak District's geological structure and history from ancient upheavals to the effects of erosion today. It explores the area's woods and wild flowers, its mosses and fungi, birds and fishes, roads and villages and farms, its weather and its rural economy. The author, who probably knows the geography of the Peak as thoroughly as anyone alive, has drawn freely on the help of friends and colleagues at Nottingham University, including notably Professor H. H. Swinnerton, author of the successful volume on Fossils in this series, and Mr. R. H. Hall, who have provided the geological and botanical chapters respectively.

To the many thousands of ramblers who visit the Peak District at weekends, summer and winter alike, here is a book by one who has trodden all the paths before them and is able to discover for them interests hitherto unsuspected to enhance their enjoyment. At the same time it is a survey of great interest to naturalists everywhere.